Cassie Zinkan hails from Middletown, Pennsylvania. At the age of 29, Cassie has fully immersed herself in 26 years of music, with her first-recalled memory of singing belonging to Cassie’s older sister giving her voice lessons when Cassie was 3. Always first in line for choir solos, her passion for performing only grew through her school years. She holds a Bachelor’s degree from Mansfield University of Pennsylvania ('19), and a Master’s Degree from the Eastman School of Music ('22).

Cassie’s first role in a musical theater production was Liesl in The Sound of Music, at age 16 (going on 17). Musical theater roles studied at Mansfield included Kate McGowan from Titanic! The Musical, Gingy in Shrek the Musical, Elizabeth Benning in Young Frankenstein, and Rosalia in West Side Story. Roles performed in the Mansfield Opera Theater included Vera Boronel in Menotti’s The Consul, Susanna from Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, Rosalinde in Strauss II’s Die Fledermaus, and Pamina from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. She greatly loved performing in the Mansfield University Concert Choir. Cassie and her colleagues especially enjoyed the role as the chorus for the benefit concert of Candide at Carnegie Hall in 2018, featuring voice talents of John Lithgow, John Appleby, Erin Morley, and Marilyn Horne.

Tragedy struck in the first year of Cassie’s Master’s degree. COVID-19-enforced lockdowns ruined many artistic opportunities and disrupted class schedules on a massively unprecedented scale. Before lockdown, Cassie was a featured character in a student-composed opera entitled Sammy & Remy. She took a year off to attempt to wait out the worst, where she continued making music at a local Episcopalian church. Upon return to classes the following year, Cassie took more opportunities in Rochester as Cinderella’s Stepmother in Into the Woods, Satirino in Cavalli’s opera La Calisto, and as a featured soloist with the Eastman Rochester Chorus in 20th-century works conducted by William Weinert.

Currently, Cassie works as a server at a Delco brewery. She is taking guitar lessons and plays live pop, classic rock, and jazz music regularly at venues in Delaware County with two guitar/vocal duos and one 5-piece band called The Sepiatones. This performance will be her first chamber performance since her Master’s degree recital.